Furniture, particularly furniture for sitting, such as chairs, loveseats, sofa, and sectionals, have heretofore been generally designed for either permanent use at a given location or for temporary use to be moved about easily. Such furniture for permanent use has generally been constructed with a rigid frame to which the upholstery is permanently attached so as to not generally be movable relative thereto (except, of course for removable cushions and the like). Such permanent type upholstered furniture is also generally heavy and bulky, being difficult to store and transport, generally requiring special facilities and handling by skilled movers or furniture handlers.
Portable furniture, on the other hand has been previously suggested, which may be easily stored and transported. Such furniture is generally designed to be as light in weight as practical and to either fold or stack for storage. Upholstery is generally minimal on such furniture, being limited to a simple seat cushion, perhaps a small back cushion, and rarely, small arm cushioning. Overall upholstery, however, is rarely provided, or clearly denotes the folding or temporary nature of the furniture.
Chairs, and the like, have also been heretofore suggested wherein bands of cloth or the like have been combined with frameworks, either folding or rigid, to provide slings for supporting people more or less comfortably. In some instances such bands or slings also provide some structural interaction with the frame members, as providing limits beyond which the frame members cannot extend. Hence, slings and frames have been combined into such furniture as director's chairs and butterfly chairs.
Further, slip covers have been heretofore suggested to be form fitted over chairs, settees, sofas, and the like, generally to enable the color or pattern of the upholstery to be easily changed, or to provide protection for the permanent upholstery of the piece. Such slipcovers, however, seldon if ever have any active cooperation with the framework and therefore do not provide any structural part of the furniture. Furniture wherein a removable fabric covering and a frame structurally interact heretofore required complex fastening systems therebetween. Ease of portability is therefore adversely effected, as are cost and weight of the assembly padded in the manner of conventional upholstered furniture and the overall design is limited substantially to the design shown in the patent drawings; little freedom of design is offered with only a straight line contour or parallelipiped being permissible between the side frame uprights. Hence, the design freedoms and appearance of conventional upholstered furniture can not be achieved.